Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Make Your Own Peanut Butter

I go through phases where I could eat PB&Js like all day. I'm in one of those phases right now. There's a reason why people say things go together like peanut butter and jelly because they're amazing together.

I recently read the book Make the Bread, Buy the Butter by Jennifer Reese. Jennifer tried a lot of recipes to figure out which things are better to make from scratch and which we should just buy. Some things are pretty complicated and I'd rather pay an extra dollar for a somewhat worse, but familiar product. But peanut butter. It's just peanuts. That I can do.

The only other thing you need to make peanut butter is a food processor. I guess you could try it with a blender but I'm really not sure how it would turn out. My granny (a cute little grandma) got me a mini food processor because she loves her's. They run about $20-$30 and it's worth it. You could make peanut butter in small batches.

It's really easy. You just pour and press a button.

This is all you need - dry roasted unsalted peanuts, food processor and jar. I cleaned out my old peanut butter jar to put my new homemade peanut butter in. I'm sure you could use any other clean jar you have.

It turns into this weird clump. It all moves like it's in a stadium and the peanuts are doing the wave.

Still a little chunky. Keep it running.

There it is. Nice and smooth peanut butter.

You don't even have to wipe the sides down with a spatula and it took less than 10 minutes. Plus, it's so peanut-y cause there aren't any other oils or anything in there. You could add some oil to make it thinner, if you want, but I had no problems with this consistency.

If you want it a little chunky, you could reserve some of the peanuts at the beginning and add them once it's smooth and give it a few pulses.

I keep mine in the fridge and it does need to be stirred a little before you use it.